


inscrutabilis

by driv_el



Category: Call Down The Hawk - Fandom, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Religion, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21995968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driv_el/pseuds/driv_el
Summary: Adam Parrish joins Ronan Lynch and his brothers for Mass at St. Agnes on a lazy Sunday morning. Feat. kissing and a bit of religious angst.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 112





	inscrutabilis

It's Sunday morning and Adam wakes up with his legs tangled in Ronan's bedsheets. Ronan is half dressed for Mass, his back to Adam. He's searching through a pile of clothes on a chair to find something to wear. Adam buries his head under a pillow in a half-hearted attempt to block out Ronan's whistling. 

"What time is it?" Adam mumbles into the mattress. 

"Eight-ish," Ronan says. He pulls on his cleanest shirt and then climbs back into bed. 

He yanks the pillow from Adam's head and puts his lips next to Adam's right ear. He breathes, softly. And then he starts whistling again. 

"Jesus!" Adam rolls over.

Ronan is laughing, the kind of goofy, head thrown back laugh Adam only sees when Ronan is in a particular mood. The teasing, boisterous mood that helps Adam remember Ronan was a little kid, once. That Ronan wasn't born with an intricate back tattoo, a buzzed head, and the kind of emotional trauma that made it difficult to admit that he cared about anything at all. That once, Ronan was unafraid. Unafraid of laughter that wasn't tinged with irony and unafraid of how much love seeped out of him when he wasn't paying attention. Unafraid to dream. To dream impossible, beautiful things.

Adam shoves his hand over Ronan's mouth. Ronan sticks his tongue out and licks Adam's hand. It's slobbery and juvenile so Adam bites Ronan's neck in retaliation. They find themselves wrestling in Ronan's childhood bedroom. Adam has sharp elbows, Ronan has two brothers, and they're both too goddamn stubborn to call a truce. But even so, they only play fight for a few minutes before the magnetic pull between their lips causes them both to forfeit.

Adam is pinned underneath Ronan. Their eyes meet, a silent agreement is made, and then they're kissing. Adam's lips part. Ronan breathes in air from Adam's lungs. The shirt Ronan had buttoned a few minutes earlier ends up on the ground. Hands are on hips, lips on collarbones. Sometimes when they're alone at the Barns, Adam can feel the pull of the ley line, in his chest, in his left ear, in his shaking hands. And sometimes when he's touching Ronan, it feels just like that: the thrum of energy that Adam has learned to call magic. 

"Shit," Ronan says, when he sees the time. "I need to head out." 

Adam props himself up on an elbow. "Take me with you?" 

Ronan laughs. "To St. Agnes? Why?" 

"It's important to you." 

So they both get out of bed, get dressed and redressed. When they step outside, Adam looks at Ronan, trying not to smile. He asks, "Should we take the motorcyle?" 

Ronan shakes his head, laughs. "You're so turned on by the thought of driving me to church on your stupid fucking motorcycle." 

"Ronan," Adam says. "I know this is _your_ fantasy." 

"Whatever, Parrish." Ronan rolls his eyes, but it lacks the usual impact. 

"I'm psychic," Adam says. "And I know you." He rests his fingers lightly on Ronan's cheek for such a brief second, an earlier version of Ronan would have thought he imagined it. He gets on the motorcycle, gestures for Ronan to join him. 

The motorcycle had been dreamed, if not for Adam, in the presence of Adam. He cherished it because Ronan had made it and because of how Ronan looked at him when he rode it. They headed down the gravel roads that would bring them into the more developed part of Henrietta, towards Monmouth and Aglionby. 

They walk into St. Agnes together. Ronan sits next to Matthew without acknowledging Declan. Declan makes eye contact with Adam so he offers a shrug and small smile before sliding into the pew next to Ronan. Their knees knock together and Ronan realizes that the restless feeling that has been choking him lately is actually what it feels like to miss Adam. To miss Adam as he dreamed of strange gnarled trees in an open field and brought back branch covered in leaves that looked purple or green depending on how the light hit them. To miss Adam as he sat in the pew of St. Agnes and prayed, his lips moving soundlessly. To miss Adam when he remembered he was the only non-dreamed thing in his childhood home. To miss his boyfriend. To miss the feeling of his heart beating, faster. 

Ronan doesn't pay much attention to the priest during the service. He goes through the comforting motions, kneels when it's time to kneel, sings when it's time to sing. When it's time to take communion, Ronan leans into Adam and says, "You can come up and get blessed if you want, but you have to cross your hands over your chest so they know you're a heathen." 

"I think I'm good," Adam says. 

Ronan shrugs. "They'll know you're a heathen if you don't come up, so I'm good either way." 

"You suck," Adam mouths.

Ronan heads to the front of the room to drink the blood and eat the body of Christ. 

Adam watches him and wonders how many versions of Ronan there are left for him to discover. He doesn't know this Ronan yet, Ronan at church. The boy who sits silently in a pew with his brothers and seems to truly believe that wine and bread have been transubstantiated into something holy and cannibalistic. Ronan holds himself differently here- his posture is reverent. Head bowed and lips moving. The kind of awe Adam has only seen from Ronan in Cabeswater, Lindenmere, or when they're together in bed after they've both finished and all that's left to do is exist together. 

Ronan sits back down next to him, knocks his knees against Adam's. Adam smiles and brushes his fingers over Ronan's knuckles. Ronan grabs his hand and holds it, fiercely. He glances at Declan, dares him to shoot him a disapproving glare. But when Adam sees Declan notice their fingers are intertwined, Declan just looks relieved. Maybe even proud. 

While Adam is trying to memorize the nuances of this boyfriend, the feverishly invested Catholic, Ronan is running through what he has been taught here, at St. Agnes, and trying to reconcile it with what what he knows himself to be. His doctrine and his dreams have never been something he can hold in his mind at the same time without starting a thought spiral. 

Is it unforgiveable to dream things into existence? Does he liken himself unto a God by bringing new life into the world? Or maybe his dreaming is idol worship. The nightwash is a convenient excuse to keep dreaming, but deep down he knows he wouldn't give it up even if he could stop dreaming without killing himself. 

He doesn't know who God is. The world holds so much more than ley lines and dream creatures, and Ronan knows that God fits into all of this. But it's impossible to know who God is. He has felt the idea of God slipping out of his grasp since he was a child. He remembers sitting on Niall's lap and asking him how God created the world and his father showing him something he had dreamt. 

Ronan, from the ages of four to six, kept asking, "But if God made the world, and he made you and me, who made God?"

Niall had laughed and laughed. When he finally stopped laughing, he would say, "God is the beginning and end of everything" or "ask Father O'Malley next you see him" or just, "Ronan," with a slight shake of his head. 

When the service is over, they say goodbye to Declan and Matthew. Ronan shakes a few hands on the way out and seems not to notice the slight whispers going on behind his back about the boy still holding his hand. 

Adam says, "I still have the key to the apartment above St. Agnes. If you wanted to..." 

"At church?" Ronan says, incredulous. "I'm not having..." He lowers his voice. "I'm not _having sex_ with you in the same building I was baptized in as a baby." 

So they get on the motorcyle- Ronan drives this time so Adam can be the one to wrap his arms around and hold on. 

The motorcycle comes to a stop and when Adam opens his eyes, he laughs. "Monmouth?" 

"I still have the key." 

They sneak into the abandoned factory turned frat house to Virginia's strangest fraternity that been slowly turning back into something abandoned since it's tenants graduated high school and/or became lost to time. 

And then they're in Ronan's other old bedroom- the one where he lived when he raised Chainsaw from an adorably pathetic ball of fluff into an adult raven. The one where Ronan lived when Adam thought he craved Blue's lips on his and not an escape from his father's house. The one where Noah was alive- not alive, exactly, but present. They marveled at the emptiness of the building that once held a scale model of Henrietta, two insomniacs, and one quasi-ghost. 

They crash into each other, all sharp elbows and saliva and that insatiable _wanting_ they both house.

Ronan finds himself on his knees, looking up at his beautiful, impossible boyfriend. Adam's eyes are closed and his lips are parted. When he moans, Ronan feels the place in his mind he usually saves for things he can't or refuses to acknowledge loosen its grip and he thinks, _What a strange and improbable thing to be loved by Adam Parrish._

He realizes that he loves them _because_ they're unknowable. A God whose logic defies any human explanation and a man who can explain the future with a deck of cards and the bargain he made with a forest, his eyes, and his hands. 

"Et nos cedamus amori," Ronan says. Let us, too, yield to love. 

He will never get tired of the way Adam looks at him when he speaks in Latin. 

"Your grammar is terrible," Adam says. 

"Whatever." Ronan stands and presses his lips to Adam's neck. 

The magician and the dreamer lose time and daylight, together. They never mind. 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't grow up Catholic so I apologize if any details are off but I have a lot of thoughts about Ronan and religion and pondering the meaning of existence in a world where magic exists so this fic happened. 
> 
> Special thanks to Kit if you're reading this for answering my annoying questions.


End file.
